Chile posts record copper exports

The value of Chile's copper exports more than doubled in July from a year earlier to a record $3.291 billion as prices for the metal stayed high, according to central bank figures released Wednesday.
The figure was 129 percent higher than last July's copper exports, which were worth $1.436 billion, even though production expanded by just single digits.
"This increase in copper means we've had to correct our projections for the year and that copper exports this year will probably hit $32.5 billion, up 80 percent over last year," said Tomas Flores, an economist with the Liberty and Development Institute, a Santiago think tank.
Chile, the biggest copper producer in the world, has benefited from high prices, which are due to limited supplies, booming demand from China and market speculation in commodities.
Copper represents more than half of Chile's export income.
The average copper price in the first half of 2006 was more than 60 percent higher than the average in the first half of 2005.
"With these figures, total Chilean exports should reach some $57.3 billion (in 2006). This means we'll be South America's second largest exporter after Brazil, and even ahead of Venezuela," Flores said.
Miners in Chile - including the world's major private miners and government-owned Codelco - are operating at full capacity to meet demand. Even so, copper output rose only 3.4 percent in the January-June period from a year earlier to 2,605,164 tonnes.
Benchmark copper futures on the London Metal Exchange rose on Wednesday to $7,710 a tonne, compared with Tuesday's close of $7,650, as the market awaited word on resolving a strike in its tenth day at the world's largest copper mine, Escondida in Chile.
The flood of copper income, from taxes on private miners and from Codelco profit, has swelled government coffers and given Chile record budget surpluses.
But managing the huge inflow of dollar income has become a challenge for the government, which has developed a plan to save billions of dollars off shore so that Chile's peso currency does not over-appreciate and disrupt the rest of the economy.
"I don't think the dollar will suffer additional impact, because most of this trade surplus is being saved and the profit of foreign companies is being taken from the country." Flores said.
Flores said exports could come down in August - due to a recent rockslide at Codelco's massive Chuquicamata mine, and the current strike at BHP Billiton's Escondida, the largest copper mine in the world.